Last defendant on trial in slaying of UAB student Kayla Fanaei

Testimony is expected to begin today in a capital murder trial for the final defendant in the 2007 shooting death of UAB student Kayla Fanaei.

Alfred Marina, 22, has turned down a deal that would allow him to plead guilty to a reduced charge of felony murder and get a 20-year term in the Oct. 8, 2007, slaying in the parking lot of a Birmingham school.

He faces life without parole or death if he is convicted of the capital charge.

Charges already have been resolved against the two men mostly likely to have fired the single shot that killed Fanaei.

Greg Hill, 23, pleaded guilty to felony murder and is serving a 25-year term. Maurice McCarty, 21, was convicted of felony murder this year after two prior trials ended in mistrials. He is serving a life term with the possibility of parole.

The gun used to kill Fanaei belonged to Hill's brother, and Hill was carrying it that night, testimony showed. McCarty claimed in his trials that Hill was the triggerman. But prosecution witnesses said McCarty bragged afterward that he shot the student.

Fanaei, a 20-year-old psychology major at the University of Alabama at Birmingham who also volunteered on a suicide crisis line, had left a party and stopped in the parking lot around midnight while talking on a cell phone with a friend in Auburn.

The friend overheard her speak to one of the men when he offered to sell Fanaei some drugs. Minutes later, Fanaei said she had to leave because the men were coming back, then the friend heard a gunshot.

Marina's Birmingham trial is expected to last all week. Hill is set to testify, as he did against McCarty.